“Opportunity of a lunchtime more like,” Monk said sulkily under his breath.
Fanshawe ignored the remark, then added conspiratorially, “I hope that I might even sell him some of my work…”
“Your work?”
“Plays, sonnets and songs — a lifetime of toil and achievement. Even if I say so myself.”
Monk rolled his eyes a second time, and Trinculo interjected before Monk said anything to further antagonise Fanshawe, “I think those must be cooked…”
The rabbit was removed from the spit and handed round. Jack and Angus exchanged glances, weighing up whether or not the meat would be safe, but the others were already munching away happily. Even Fanshawe had been momentarily silenced. Jack was so hungry he was past caring and he popped the meat into his mouth. It tasted rich, gamey and delicious.
In under a minute, the meat was gone but it had scarcely made an impact on their hunger. Angus proceeded to rummage inside his tunic and withdrew a small plastic bag. Jack shot him a look, but it was too late; the brightly coloured bag had already been spotted by the others.
“And what is this?” Trinculo asked. “An interesting bag of tricks?”
Angus looked down at the bag and suddenly realised his mistake. “Oh, sorry, a delicacy from our home, er, you know in the north. You eat them.”
“Do they have a name?”
Angus glanced nervously at Jack, “They’re called Jelly Babies.”
“Babies of jelly?” Trinculo asked.
“Which you eat?” Monk said in awe.
“It’s just a name — try one.” Angus passed the bag round and, in trepidation, Trinculo, Fanshawe and finally Monk each removed one of the coloured sweets. Holding them in their dirty fingers, the three men waited for Angus to show them what to do. Angus shrugged and popped one into this mouth.
“There — nothing to it.”
They each copied Angus, and, as they chewed expressions of wonder and appreciation spread across their faces.
“Sweet.”
“Chewy.”
“A most providential delicacy.”
“Glad you like them. Here — have the rest.”
The Jelly Babies were soon gone and Angus had made friends for life.
Fanshawe, probably buoyed by the unexpected sugar high, leaped to his feet to carry on where he had left off.
“My friends, I feel it is time for a song to celebrate our new friendship and a fine luncheon.”
Fanshawe struck a pretentious pose and started to wail. Monk covered his ears.
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into ‘Hey nonny, nonny.’”
Fanshawe’s singing stopped abruptly and he looked around self-consciously. Jack realised what he was supposed to do and clapped heartily. “Well done!”
Angus joined in. “Er, very nice.”
“A good effort, Harry,” Trinculo said approvingly.
“Don’t encourage him,” Monk said. “It’s taken him months to write that.”
“You wrote it?” Jack said.
“But…” Jack was confused. He had heard the song before, in fact he was sure it was from Shakespeare. It was from another play they had done — they had even watched a film of it in class — Much Ado About Nothing. So how could Fanshawe have written it?
“You say you wrote it? This is part of your ‘work’… and you say you have more?” Jack asked.
“You’ve done it now,” Monk groaned.
But Fanshawe seemed to be delighted by the question.
“Of course, come, I must show you.”
Fanshawe led Jack towards the wagon.
“This will interest you, my boy.”
Jack jumped to his feet to follow Fanshawe. He briefly looked back at Angus, who shrugged his shoulders. Fanshawe climbed into the back of the wagon and Jack climbed in after him. It was stuffed full of clothes, bedding and other paraphernalia. It looked like it had been the Fanshawe Players’ home, costume wardrobe and kitchen for months. It smelt bad.
“Over here.”
They crawled towards the front of the wagon where Fanshawe unearthed a small wooden chest from under a pile of clothes.
“Here we are.”
He took a large brass key that hung round his neck and inserted it into a lock in the front of the chest.
“Very precious.”
Jack looked on, intrigued. Maybe Fanshawe was about to open a chest full of jewels or something — perhaps the lifetime takings of the Fanshawe Players.
Fanshawe opened the lid and Jack looked down on a pile of dusty old papers and parchment. Frankly he was disappointed.
Fanshawe beamed at Jack triumphantly. “There! What do you think?”
Jack did not quite know what to say. The reams of ink-stained paper were covered in a scrawly handwriting that was difficult to read.
“It’s very nice… but I don’t…”
Fanshawe interrupted. “Look, here is the first page.”
Jack looked down at the piece of paper that Fanshawe held in his hands.
It read:
Mr Harry Fanshawe’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies.
Below this was a contents page entitled ‘A Catalogue’ and beneath this was a series of titles divided into three sections: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies.
Jack’s brow creased in concentration. The titles on the contents page were familiar. Then his heart missed a beat when he realised what he was looking at. In amazement, he whispered to himself, “It’s Shakespeare.”
Fanshawe was still beaming, “I’m sorry my friend, it’s what?”
Jack couldn’t believe it. Fanshawe seemed to be in possession of an entire volume of Shakespeare’s work. But… several years before Shakespeare had written them and over thirty years before they were compiled into a single printed edition of his work: the famous First Folio. Beattie had told them all about it. Back in the twenty-first century, there were only two hundred or so First Folios in existence. They were extremely valuable and sold for three million pounds or more. How could this possibly be in the hands of Fanshawe in the back of a mouldy old cart in the middle of a forest?
“Did you write all this?”
Fanshawe beamed proudly. “Every last word — that is my hand.”
“But…”
Jack could not understand it. Was it possible that the failed actor — Harry Fanshawe, leader of a failed troupe of players — now on his last throw of the dice to somehow link up with the great Christopher Marlowe in Cambridge and save his career, could be the author of Shakespeare’s works?
Jack scanned the titles on the page. He had the benefit of a quick mind, but he was certainly no expert on Shakespeare. He knew Hamlet of course, but only because they were putting it on at school in a couple of weeks. He didn’t really know too much about the other plays, except what Miss Beattie had drilled into them in class. Nevertheless, as he scanned the titles in the contents page he realised that there was something wrong.
He recognised the titles as Shakespeare’s… but not quite. It was as if they were not right, somehow. There were titles like:
Love’s Labour’s Not Quite Found;
The Twenty-two Gentlemen of Verona;
The Big Storm;
Much Ado About an Absence of Something;
All’s Well that Ends Much Improved;
A Midsummer Night Amongst the Fairies;
The Tragical Historie of Dave, Prince of Denmark.
It was apparent from the titles, that even if Fanshawe had spent a lifetime creating the work now ascribed to Shakespeare, he had perhaps not done it very well. It needed work — a lot of work.
“Incredible,” Jack murmured.
“You’re to
o kind.” Fanshawe basked in what he took to be Jack’s admiration. There was precious little of that coming from either Trinculo or Monk — whose patience with the whole Fanshawe enterprise was wearing thin.
“Do you think I could have a look at one of the plays?”
“Certainly, sir. Which one would you like to see?”
“What about that one — The Tragical Historie of Dave, Prince of Denmark.”
“Certainly, my latest and proudest achievement.” Fanshawe rummaged through the papers and drew out a sheath of ink-blotted papers. “Here we are.”
Jack thumbed through the pages to find what he was looking for — Act III, Scene I — early on. Jack scanned the page. He knew the words he was looking for off by heart, so even in Fanshawe’s unfortunate scrawl he should be able to spot them.
He muttered to himself, reading down the list of names, “Polonious, then the king, then Polonious… this should be it… and then… Dave?”
Jack looked up at Fanshawe. “Dave?”
“Yes — David — one of the main characters in this tragedy.”
“Hold on, you’ve called him David…?”
“That is his name.”
“Not Hamlet.”
Fanshawe nodded thoughtfully. “Well, Jack, certainly ‘Hamlet’ has a certain ring to it… Yes — you’re right… Hamlet… I like it! In fact now you mention it ‘Dave’ does not sound right at all! Let’s make it Hamlet. Much more, er, Danish. Providential!”
Jack began reading the great soliloquy — one of the most famous passages in the English language. But they weren’t the words he remembered or expected:
To be, or not to be; ay, there’s the point
To die, to sleep, is that it? Yes — that’s it;
No, to sleep, to dream. Ay marry, and off we go…
Jack could hardly bear to read on. It was complete rubbish. “It’s gobbledegook.”
“Yes — I agree,” Fanshawe said. “I don’t know what that word means, Jack, but I certainly agree with you — it is certainly one of my favourite passages… certainly gobbledegook.”
Jack murmured, “It’s Shakespeare, but not quite as we know it.”
“Harry — can I suggest a couple of changes… for example, why not try the following?”
Jack closed his eyes and recited the words that he knew so well:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind…”
Jack completed the famous speech that he had rehearsed so much for the school play. Fanshawe looked at Jack with an expression of complete and utter awe.
“You have a gift… a gift of genius… a gift from heaven itself. How…?”
Jack smiled, “Oh I guess I’m a bit like you, Fanshawe, you know, a knack with words.”
Fanshawe’s eyes were agape. “But this is truly incredible… you have talent my boy… providential talent.”
Jack blushed. He knew he probably should not have done it. “Really, it’s nothing.”
But before Jack could say anything, Angus stuck his head through the curtains at the rear of the wagon.
“You guys going to be long? ’Cos we got a problem. A big problem.”
Bandit Country
There was something feral about the three men who stood on the track in front of them. Their faces and clothes — rags more like — were filthy. It was as if they had emerged from the undergrowth of the surrounding forest and were in some way part of it. Two of them brandished large wooden clubs, and the third a long knife. It was this third man who spoke through a toothless mouth.
“We don’t want much…” he said. “Just everything you’ve got.”
Trinculo was shaking and the bells on his hat started to tinkle.
“We have nothing,” Fanshawe announced bravely, puffing out his chest.
But no sooner had the words come from Fanshawe’s mouth than the ringleader wielded his great wooden club. It cut through the air and caught Fanshawe hard on the side of his thigh. Fanshawe wailed and collapsed to his knees, whimpering.
“We haven’t time for this… Stave, search the cart… Butcher and me will see what this lot have on them.” He immediately reached down to Fanshawe’s neck and yanked off a thin silver chain and cross that hung there. “That’ll do nicely for a start.”
Fanshawe sobbed louder.
Suddenly, Fanshawe’s small wooden chest was thrown from the back of the cart and Stave jumped out after it.
“I found this.”
He booted the chest which flew open and Fanshawe’s precious papers scattered across the muddy ground.
Fanshawe wailed hysterically.
The ringleader prodded him with his stick. “Shut your mouth — or you’ll get more of this.”
He strode over to the chest. “What is it?”
Trinculo and Monk were silent.
He turned back to them and snarled, “I asked what is it?”
Monk said quietly, “Plays, poems.”
Trinculo mumbled, “They’re not worth anything.”
But the ringleader had a glint in his eye. “Not what I hear. You can get ten shillings for a play… maybe more, if it’s any good.”
The bandits gathered round the papers, suddenly interested.
Jack whispered to Angus from the side of his mouth, “Any ideas?”
“Tony and Gordon carried the only weapons, but I did manage to sneak this with me… was at the bottom of my school bag for some reason.”
Angus opened his doublet fractionally for Jack to see what was inside. He had brought his catapult. And it wasn’t the one made from a bit of wood hewn from a tree with an elastic band attached. Angus had a slingshot of high-tensile industrial rubber tethered to a carbon fibre frame. Jack had seen Angus use this favourite ‘toy’ to shatter a beer bottle fifty metres away. He opened up the other side of his doublet.
“And I found a couple of these in the VIGIL prep area… pocketed them while the others weren’t looking,” he whispered.
A couple of tubes poked up from his inside pocket. Jack didn’t know what they were.
“Thunder flashes,” Angus said guiltily.
The bandits had become bored with the papers and they hurriedly stuffed them back into the wooden chest. The ringleader turned back to them.
“What else have you got?”
Angus reached into his pocket, pulled out one of the thin tubes and held it out.
“I have this… But I don’t know if you will want it.”
“What is it?”
Angus looked at Jack who interjected, “We use it in our plays… it is, er, a musical stick. It makes music.”
“Loud music,” Angus added.
The ringleader came closer. “I have never heard of such a thing… how does it work?”
“Easy,” Angus said. “See that rock over there. Well, you just bang the bottom of the music stick on it… and then hold it in your hand… and wait for the music.”
Stave barged forward. “I want to do it!”
“No me…” Butcher said.
“Stand aside — I will do it — I am the leader.”
The ringleader took the thunder flash, marched over to the rock and manfully banged one end onto the rock. “Like that?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Angus, “just like that.”
They waited.
The ringleader looked at them questioningly. “It’s not work-”
Suddenly, there was a blinding flash of light and an earsplitting bang as the thunder flash went off in the bandit’s hand. It was as if the entire forest had gone up. For a second he was invisible in the swirling blue smoke, but as it cleared, the man staggered blindly around, clutching his hand and wailing in pain.
His friends raced over to help him. Angus whipped out his catapult and selected a stone from the ground. In one movement he stretched back the rubber, extending it all the way from his outstretched arm to his ear lobe. He closed his left eye and narrowed his right along the length of the r
ubber and… released. Jack could have sworn he heard the stone hiss angrily through the air. It caught Stave in his kneecap and he sank to the ground, emitting a low guttural grunt. Butcher turned, his face red with anger, and pelted towards them wielding his club as he came. But Angus had coolly reloaded the catapult and unleashed a second shot. It was extraordinary that a small pebble could stop a grown man in his tracks. But it did. Angus had again skilfully targeted the leg, and now all three of their assailants were on the ground. Alive, but in a great deal of pain.
Angus reloaded for a third time, but Jack put his hand up.
“I think we’re done.”
Angus lowered the catapult.
Fanshawe was soon on his feet, wrapping Angus and Jack in a bear hug.
“Thank you, my friends.”
Trinculo immediately performed another jig — just as embarrassing as the first.
Jack and Angus approached the three bandits who groaned in the mud.
“Will they be okay?” Jack asked.
“Unfortunately, yes, they’ll be limping around for a day or two… and what’s-his-face will have a nasty burn on that hand… but they’ll be fine.”
Jack looked down at the three men. He wasn’t quite sure what to say, but tried his best tough-man voice. “Right you lot. Come near us again… and well… we’ve got a load more tricks up our sleeves… and you’ll regret it — we’ll, er, be calling 999.”
Angus tried not to smile. The bandits looked up at them with a mixture of confusion and fear. They seemed to have got the message.
They made the long approach to Cambridge from the north-west in the afternoon of the following day. Despite being trouble free, the journey had been tough and progress painfully slow along the pitted roads. They had taken it in turns to ride up on the cart… but most of the time they had walked. Since their impromptu lunch they had eaten very little, although Jack and Angus had, on occasion, dipped surreptitiously into their emergency rations. It was only because of this that they had managed to keep going and Jack had no idea how the others had survived the journey.
Despite little food, Fanshawe had babbled incessantly. Subjects included their miraculous escape from the bandits, the details of which Fanshawe and Trinculo repeated again and again, their exploits becoming braver and more exaggerated each time. Angus, in particular, was being likened to a demigod for his role in beating off the attackers. Even Monk added grudging words of thanks. Then Fanshawe turned to his great plans for the future of the Fanshawe Players and how, working with the young genius whom he had ‘discovered’ — one Jack Christie — they would all become famous and make their fortunes. Finally, he talked enthusiastically about their forthcoming meeting with Christopher Marlowe and their final destination, the town of Cambridge. As he called it, “The most exquisite in all of Christendom.”
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